On 12 November 2011, the African Development Bank's (AfDB)'s Human Development Department organized a meeting with members of the Association of African Students and Trainees in Tunisia to listen to their views on the Joint AU/ILO/UNECA/AfDB's Initiative on Youth Employment in Africa.
The joint initiative will be formally endorsed by African heads of state and governments at the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, scheduled to take place in January 2012.
The initiative received a warm welcome by the young people at the event, c culminating in a collective decision to organize a Youth Summit in Tunis. The summit will bring together gathering around 500 to 2,000 participants, from the worlds of the private sector, young entrepreneurs, donors, policy-makers and civil society.
The group requested a web platform and a blog where they could exchange views and collectively decide on how best to bring this new initiative into operation.
Questions such as "what are the themes that should be identified to begin to tackle the problem of youth employment in Africa?"; "which methodology should we use to implement the initiative at country level?"; "which platform should we adopt to reach youth all across Africa given the pockets of non-connectivity in Africa?" will be addressed through the online platform.
